New practice facility at Tulane is taking shape

The view outside Lisa Stockton’s office at the Wilson Center lately has been obstructed.

And the Tulane women’s basketball coach couldn’t be more thrilled. Finally, after years of talk about what the Green Wave’s administration could do to relieve the three-sport demand on Fogelman Arena’s single court, construction on the $14 million, 43,000-square-foot Hertz Practice Facility is nearly completed. The structure is a looming presence in her window about a year after construction started.

John McCusker/The Times-PicayuneThe new 43,000-square-foot Hertz Practice Facility for the Tulane men's and women's basketball teams and the volleyball team is expected to open in September.

“I think basketball has waited a long time for a facility that is functional,” Stockton said. “But this is state of the art training from the equipment we ordered to the weight room to the treadmills. Everything is state of the art, so not only is it a convenience, but it’s going to be a high-level facility.”

The two-story building bears a jet-black façade now with angled lines. Inside, two full courts are on the expansive ground floor, along with offices and training and hydrotherapy facilities. Conference rooms, offices, a plush video room and lounges for the men’s and women’s teams adorn the second level — and a plate glass window overlooks the courts below.

In the coming months the dark exterior will be painted, the drywall will be completed and the trimmings will be added before an expected ribbon cutting in mid-September, which would be ahead of schedule.

“That’s exciting,” said Green Wave Athletic Director Rick Dickson, who has been traveling much of the past two months. “It’s been fun each week to come back and see what they’ve done.”

The facility solves a long-running problem for the athletic department. The volleyball, men’s basketball and women’s basketball teams were vying for practice and game time on Fogelman Arena’s lone court. Complicating matters further is that Fogelman Arena, which was built in the 1930s, has little parking access and is about a mile from the school’s athletic headquarters, the Wilson Center.

“I’ve been in here 17 years,” Stockton said. “We’ve just never had any options for practice, for training or anything. To me it’s exciting for the program. I’m excited for our players here, and I think it’s a sense of pride for those who have been here and known how much we needed something like this. This is absolutely the perfect decision for our programs because we are so landlocked over there. This is going to be so impressive for recruiting but also the function of just day-to-day life for our players.”

It’s that daily life that has been inconvenient for the players involved. The main athletic training offerings are at the Wilson Center, and the coaches’ offices are at the Wilson Center. The weight room is at the Wilson Center, but the players’ locker rooms and court was at Fogelman Arena. If a men’s basketball player lifted weights at the Wilson Center before heading to practice at Fogelman Arena and forgot his sneakers, it was a big problem, for example.

“Any mistake is a 30-minute mistake,” men’s basketball coach Ed Conroy said. “I think it’s going to be huge but most importantly just that togetherness of having one spot.”

Stockton said the new facility eliminates not only competition among the three sports for court time but also time and energy for each player and coach each day.

“The way it’s set up, they can study in the locker room, they can get taped, go lift, they can work out, they can come over here and shoot at night and everything is right there,” Stockton said. “They can have study hall; they can go over there. I think chemistry-wise for the team, it’s going to bring them together more, but also just developmental. I think for our staff, we don’t have to wait for a goal to be open at Fogelman to go work with somebody. ... We can work in our offices and then go downstairs for practice.”

Not every Tulane fan was in favor of spending millions on a practice facility, something they wouldn’t have a ticketed seat in. Some wanted a gussied-up Fogelman Arena instead, and Tulane’s administration originally tried to re-configure the facility with additional courts, updated locker rooms and training areas.

But the landlocked nature of Fogelman Arena presented problems, and the costs of renovating the structure mushroomed to the $50 million to $60 million range — in other words, football stadium-type money.

“That’s where I remember clearly at the board meeting going, time out,” Dickson said. “It’s great that we are having the discussion about doing this, but if we are going to jump to the $50 million, $60 million price range, there’s a whole different model I want to roll in here — and it has nothing to do with basketball.

“Their look was kind of, what do you mean? I said let’s look back to the origin of this. It would be nice to have a new game-day facility, but we need basic accommodations. All I ever wanted to do with Fogelman anyway was doing a refurbishing of that, and we had gotten away from that because we were trying to make it an end all.”

Designs to build a practice facility near the Wilson Center went into motion with consideration given to allowing space for an on-campus football stadium if that or any other facility became a viable option, Dickson said. Doug Hertz, a board member, fronted the lead gift for the venue that will be named for him and was designed by GouldEvans Associates, LC with Lee Ledbetter & Associates.

The new structure sits between the Tulane Institute of Sports Medicine, the tennis courts and the Wilson Center on Ben Weiner Drive. It butts up against the football practice field.

The outside of the building will coordinate with the style of Turchin Stadium and the Wilson Center. Inside, sleek lines and a minimalist feel exaggerate the expansiveness of the space. A long, narrow, vertical window invites natural light into the main court area.

“I remember the first time going in after they got the roof up ... I was kind of stunned at the scope of it,” Dickson said. “It was just like, wow. This building (the Wilson Center) is nearly 60,000 feet, so it’s almost two-thirds the size of the Wilson Center. You don’t realize it looking at it from afar, but you walk in it, it’s a pretty big place.”

There’s no question the facility is a glimmering recruiting point as well.

“We’ve got one of the best universities in the country, that is never hard to sell,” Stockton said. “I think Tulane speaks for itself on a national level. ... Now in athletics with the commitment to facilities, I think we can position ourselves to show you can get the best of both academics and athletics. That’s what we’ve been selling since I’ve been here, but now we can actually have something to say, ‘Hey, we really are committed to basketball, we are really committed to athletics.’ ”

When the doors finally open, it will confirm a promise, Conroy said.

“Until something is done, there is always doubt,” he said. “There is always skepticism, and now you see that thing going up, and you see how fast that thing is going up, you see the new players arriving on campus — there is just this energy to what we’re doing. They believe because you told them something would happen, and it’s happening.”

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Tammy Nunez can be reached at tnunez@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3405.